Survive and advance. That March Madness phrase may never be more applicable than it is now.On a day in which five afternoon games came down to the final possession and two double-digit seeds scored upsets — No. 13 seed Morehead State over No. 4 seed Louisville and No. 12 seed Richmond over No. 5 seed Vanderbilt — advancing was the only thing that mattered Thursday.Kentucky is moving on to the third round of the NCAA Tournament on a Brandon Knight game-winning layup with 2.0 seconds (which you can read more about here). Fourth-seeded UK defeated 13th-seeded Princeton 59-57 in front of 14,835 fans at the St. Pete Times Forum in Tampa, Fla.The victory helped UK avoid its biggest upset in NCAA Tournament history.”Winning is the most important thing no matter how bad you played,” junior guard DeAndre Liggins said.It was close, and there are a lot of things to be concerned about if you’re a Kentucky fan, but ask Louisville how much it would prefer an ugly win than to sit at home for the remainder of March. See if Vanderbilt would trade a scary two-point win for a loss to Richmond.Survive and advance.”How we escaped, I still have to go watch the tape and figure it out,” head coach John Calipari said. He’ll see an inexperienced team suddenly being carried by three veterans.With Terrence Jones and Brandon Knight continuing to struggle in the postseason, it was Darius Miller, Josh Harrellson and Liggins who helped Kentucky advance to the third round of the Big Dance. Sure, Knight had the game-winning layup, but his only points came with 2.0 seconds left. Until that point, he was 0 for 7 from the floor. Jones scored 10, but he had just two rebounds. And with Lamb largely nonexistent (seven points), how did Kentucky score enough to stay in the game?Seventeen points from Miller, 15 points and 10 rebounds from by way of Harrellson, and eight points and two very big assists from Liggins, was how. Of Kentucky’s 59 points, 40 came from juniors or seniors.So much for this being a youth-driven team.”Those three (freshmen) played a part, yet this team was carried by the veterans today,” Calipari said.Kentucky found itself in a dogfight midway through the first half when the Tigers clawed back from a nine-point deficit and took a 24-22 lead with 4:05 left in the first half. UK went to the locker room with a one-point lead, but Princeton pulled in front by as many as five points when Brendan Connolly hit a layup with 13:27 left in the game.With its two leading scorers struggling and concern setting in among the Big Blue faithful at the St. Pete Times Forum, the players say they never wavered.”No panic,” Liggins said. “You can’t be concerned. You can’t panic in the tournament. That’s how you lose tournament games.”Calipari called timeout to halt the 9-3 Princeton run to start the second half, but UK didn’t seem to get its bearings until its sparkplug, Liggins, started to get his game going on the offensive end.Trailing 44-39, Liggins received a backdoor bounce pass from Miller at the top of the paint. Liggins sliced through traffic and looked as if he was about to turn the ball over, but he somehow whipped a pass to Harrellson on the other side of the basket, and the senior forward finished it off with a layup as he was fouled.Moments later, Liggins would find Harrellson on the low block again to give Kentucky a 47-44 lead. It was all part of a 15-6 run that reestablished UK control.”I didn’t play so well in the first half,” Liggins said. “My body language wasn’t in it like it usually is. I’m usually intense. The second half my team lifted me.”The recipient of Liggins’ momentum-changing passes, Harrellson, was just as valuable in holding off Princeton. “We’re still playing … because of him,” Calipari said.Harrellson had logged just six career minutes in an NCAA Tournament game before Thursday, but he looked like he had been there before. He didn’t want his UK career to end, and it showed in his will to win when Kentucky fell flat.”I came out and I was pretty nervous at first, but the jitters went away pretty quick,” Harrellson said.Of course, Kentucky may have been behind even more than five had it not been for Miller. He provided the only real offensive threat in the first half, scoring 15 of his 17 points before halftime. “We all stayed focus,” Miller said. “We talked to each other, made sure everybody was still confident. In most of the huddles, we were just trying to stay focused on what we needed to do. We needed to pick up our intensity and stay focused, and hopefully it played out the best for us, and it did.”Kentucky played far from its best game Thursday, and questions about UK’s ability to seriously contend with several key inexperienced players should only intensity after narrowly escaping.But the bottom line is the Cats survived and advanced Thursday. That’s the only thing that counts at this time of the year.Now will they learn?”You don’t want to get in that situation no more,” Liggins said. “We’ll try to do whatever it takes in the beginning of the game to put us in a situation where we don’t have to deal with that at the end.”